Spectral characteristics of resting state networks

Resting state networks (RSNs), as imaged by functional MRI, are distributed maps of areas believed to be involved in the function of the "resting" brain, which appear in both resting and task data. The current dominant view is that such networks are associated with slow (∼0.015Hz), spontaneous fluctuations in the BOLD signal. To date, limited work has investigated the frequency characteristics of RSNs; here we investigate a range of issues relating to their spectral and phase characteristics. Our results indicate that RSNs, although dominated by low frequencies in the raw BOLD signal, are in fact broadband processes that show temporal coherences across a wide frequency spectrum. In addition, we show that RSNs exhibit different levels of phase synchrony at different frequencies. These findings challenge the notion that FMRI resting signals are simple "low frequency" spontaneous signal fluctuations.